It’s interesting to search for facebook groups that contain the title “app”.

What you’ll find (especially after page 1) is page after page of predominantly negative group names, such as

“Against any more damn Facebook apps!!!”
“All the apps ruined facebook”
“All The Facebook Apps. Are Gay”
“All these “apps” make facebook feel like myspace…”
“Apps are turning facebook into myspace… apps must die”
“APPS ARE CRAP”

…with an occasional positive one, such as

“Apps are NOT turning Facebook into Myspace”

Now, in any forum for user feedback, I would expect a lot of negative comments — such is the human condition — but in this case, the comments aren’t saying “Apps are broken” or “Please make apps better,” they are saying “Apps need to go away NOW”.

I assume this is largely a reaction to a few of the very same “successful” apps mentioned in this article by Alex Krupp. The highly viral ones that are currently inundating me with spam about being “bitten by zombies,” and finding new ways to classify and compare my friends. These apps spread like wildfire, but I imagine the novelty wears off quickly.

The conclusion I’m drawing from this is that we need to concentrate more on making apps engaging, than making them communicable. The plague was highly communicable, but no one wanted it. The social interactions an app promotes should be high quality interactions, and not just more “shares” and “notifications” of meaningless events.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Linkydinks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.